


I Will Remember You

by ObsidianMichi



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jaws of Hakkon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 07:16:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3969159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianMichi/pseuds/ObsidianMichi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Hakkon's destruction, Eirwen reflects on the past Inquisitor and his love while Solas wonders what she would do in their place. (Post-Breakup, not Post-Game)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Remember You

Eirwen’s eyes focused out on the sheet of ice filling the bay, one hand resting on her knee. A bloody bandage wrapped about one hand, where a deepstalker had sunk its teeth into her palm. Clothing slightly ragged, a faint bruise purpling along her jawline. From the safety of her hilltop, she watched as gurguts hunted each other through the shallows. To the left, her eyes caught bright red flames from the campsite. Violet bloomed across the white-blue structure, rays of the sun distantly illuminating the Lady’s Rest.

She heard Solas coming before she saw him, light steps only slipping slightly on the rocks.

“Come to tend me?” she asked, head twisting just enough to watch him emerge from the trees.

“I did not think I had become so predictable,” he replied.

“You’ve patched me up after every dragon fight,” she said, carefully keeping her voice light. “I’d be more surprised if you didn’t.” She let the implication hang, the knowledge of what they were once and were no longer. “You’ve never been one to neglect your responsibilities, Solas.”

He picked his way across the rocks and slid into a seat beside her. “Indeed.” Unslinging his pack, one hand flipped open the flap and he drew forth a small poultice. He held it out to her. “Deepstalker venom has proven remarkably tenacious.”

She took the potion with her good hand, a faint smile curving her lips. “And if I already took one back at camp?”

“You did not,” he replied. One hand turned over her palm, undoing the wrapped bandages.

“How do you know?” Eirwen asked. She leaned forward a little, mouth thinning. Her brows rose, speculatively. A sign of amusement. A good front. “Have you been watching me?”

“Drink,” he said. “You may prod me later.”

She tried to laugh, but it escaped her in a throttled squeak. “I’ll hold you to that.” Putting the bottle to her lips, she tilted it back and swallowed. “Oh...” she swayed, mouthful of salty brine, sour roots, and fish oil caught in her throat. “That’s foul. What is it?”

“A specialty of the Stone-Bear hold,” he replied. “Acting as an anti-toxin, a cure for infection, and an alcoholic beverage.” He glanced at her, his fingers running across reddened skin. “After today’s events, I thought, perhaps, you might have need of one.”

“Probably,” she said, and took another swig. Her eyes swung to him. “I wasn’t the only one who nearly died from exposure.”

“Iron Bull and Sera both seem to be taking it in stride.” His smile tightened. “As one might expect.” Slowly, he lay her hand on her knee and reached into his pack. “Out of us all, your day has been the hardest.”

“I thought I was hardening my heart,” Eirwen said. She tilted her head. “Sharpening myself to a cutting edge. Aren’t you at all concerned all this attention will set me back? Distract me from the larger picture?”

Blue-gray eyes studied her, glinting in the twilight. “Between the two evils, I would rather have you alive to face our foe.”

Her gaze dropped. “Spoilsport.”

“You handled the events of the past few days well.”

“I suppose,” she replied. “I don’t think there’s a map for meeting one’s predecessor or unleashing and killing a spirit-god possessing a dragon.”

He smiled. “Perhaps, there is not.” Slowly, he drew a wrap of white linen from his pack. “If so, you have forged new territory.”

Eirwen shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “I’m hoping I won’t be the one in the ice a few thousand years from now, waiting on another Inquisitor to finish what I started.” Her eyelids fluttered shut and she exhaled a long sigh. “The whole story was terrible and sad, and hauntingly familiar.”

“Yes,” he replied. “A tragedy in all respects.”

They sat for a moment in silence. Beyond them, rays of red light faded into purple and black. The velvet coat of twilight spread across the great pillars of ice along the frozen shore. The gurguts continued their battle, hunting and pouncing along the shallows. Eirwen caught the warm orange lights flickering in the distance, in the windows of the surviving fishing cabins.

“If you were to find yourself their situation,” Solas finally said. “What would you do?”

“Ameridan and Telana?” she asked. “I suppose it depends.”

His warm fingers tightened around her hand, rough calluses scraping over her knuckles. A slight smile, almost imperceptible, touched the corner of his mouth and he smoothed down the bandage across her cut. “I suppose it would,” he agreed.

Eirwen smiled, her gaze dropped. “Am I Ameridan?” She tilted her head. “Or Telana?”

“I see.” Solas chuckled, a warm, rolling sound that rattled inside her. “Indeed, that would make quite the difference.”

Eirwen paused, still. Her eyelids drooped and closed. His voice had always been a comfort, rays of sunshine breaking through steel gray clouds. Soothing her worries with the gentle brush of a fingertip. _It’s wrong to bask in this moment._ “It’s been a while,” she said. Her voice softened by the knowledge that the moment would be over when she spoke.

He stiffened.

She half-expected him to thrust away her hand. “Since I’ve heard you laugh.”

His eyes shut and he drew in a slow breath. “Inquisitor,” he murmured. “Please.”

“I know we’re no longer lovers,” she said. “We’ve put it aside to face Corypheus, but can we no longer be friends?”

His head turned, shoulders hunching as he sank in on himself. Fingertips moving, almost mechanically, over her bandage. “It is too painful.”

She sighed. “You’re asking me would I stop living if the person I loved left me. You should know me well enough already to know the answer.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “However, given recent events, I need to hear it.” Gently, he lay her hand down on her knee. “Consider this a…” he paused, “personal weakness.”

She glanced at him, studying the taut lines of his cheeks and lips. He moved stiffly, each inhale stilted, eyes watching her carefully. _I could lie._ He still professed to care about her, even if refused to stay with her. The naked truth would hurt him. _A lie isn't what he wants._ Her gaze fell to her hand, to the carefully wrapped white linen bandage. Reddened skin, pink, and she remembered her face. Closing her eyes, she inhaled a deep breath. _He wants the truth._ She was beyond soothing his ego now, beyond giving him what he wanted, beyond telling him what he wanted to hear. She'd often tried to balance the truth with his pride, struggled to grasp pain which haunted him and the events behind them. Now, her truth was what mattered. _And I want him to know it._

“I’ve grown accustomed to abandonment,” Eirwen said. A part of her wanted to be kind, yet another wanted to hurt him. Those words, she knew, would. He didn’t deserve it, not entirely. Or, another angrier part of her thought, maybe he did. “And I have come to accept myself as the one who leaves.” Her fingers brushed against his thumb as he drew away. “It’s inevitable.” The memory of that night flared hot in her mind and her jaw clenched. “I will be all right without you, Solas.” She watched his fingers tense, only slightly. “In the end, I’d rather be with you but…” she let her lashes flutter, “I can go on.”

He paused, eyes dropping. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I am glad to hear it.”

Eirwen smiled, but it was polite. He spoke warmly, but the underlying edges were ragged. She knew neither of them would say what they wanted or what they meant. She wondered if he was truly glad to know she could move on. After all, it was what he kept saying he wanted.

They sat together in silence.

“Still,” she began. “In this scenario, which am I?”

He glanced at her, blue-gray eyes stormy.

“The one who fights the dragon?” Eirwen leaned forward. “Or the one who waits, dedicating the remainder of their life to searching for the one they lost?”

There was a question in his eyes, unspoken. If he did answer her now, the words would only be present in order to fill an awkward silence. If he knew her at all, then there was only one acceptable answer. If he failed to give it, well, Eirwen’s heart squeezed, she didn’t really want to know if he thought of her as Telana.

She reached out and took his hand. “I will die fighting dragons, Solas.” Her smile turned gentle, she kept her voice firm. “I will not go to some island and dream my life away. I have this world and this life. I shall climb mountains, I will rage against gods. I will battle and I will conquer. I will not wait for death politely in my bed.” Her head tilted and her smile widened. “There’s too much to do.”

He paused, eyes moving to their hands. “Thank you, Inquisitor.” Then, his fingers slipped from her grasp and he pulled away. “Now,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. Graceful as always. “It is my duty to remind you, be careful of your injuries.”

Eirwen looked away. _Duty,_ she thought. That was what it always amounted to, wasn’t it? All there was now, all that was left. Her eyes studied the blades of grass beneath her feet, counting the pebbles, focused on anything and anyone other than him. Her heart thudded against her ribs, she clenched her fist on her thigh. Then, she lifted her gaze and looked him squarely in the eye. _I am not a coward. I will not run. Not from this and certainly not from you._ “As usual, hahren,” she said. She kept her voice light and even, joking. Her words a memory of a time before they went walking in dreams. “I promise nothing.”

“Yet,” he said softly. “You deliver everything.”

She frowned.

“I apologize,” Solas said. His back straightened. “That was…” he swallowed, “unkind.” He offered her a slight bow. “Good evening, Inquisitor.” He turned on his heel, striding back toward the camp until at last his tall, broad back vanished into inky darkness.

Inhaling deeply, Eirwen gripped her hand and clutched it to her chest. She bent over, pressing her forehead to her knees. The memories of Ameridan filtered down through her thoughts, half-drawn from where she’d left them boxed inside her mind. Those warm sparks of love, of devotion _. Ameridan’s hope for Telana,_ she thought. His desire in the end, for her to live and not spend her life searching. _He wanted to go home in the end._ She smiled. _And he did._

Slowly, she reached down to the pack beside her and flipped it open. There the Inquisitor’s, Ameridan’s helm lay wrapped. It had been with her on her journeys through Orlais and Fereldan, ever since she’d pulled it off that dragon in the Emerald Graves. Running her fingers over smoothed curves of polished silverite, she smiled. _Time for you to do so as well._

“Time to return Ameridan and Telana to the People,” she said. “You deserve to have your story and memory honored among the Clans, for them to know our importance to the Chantry’s history.” She closed her eyes. “Even if it’s an unfortunate truth few may wish to hear.” A smile touched her lips. “Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.” Gently, she closed the flap with a smile and held the pack close to her chest. Warm tears slipped down her cheeks, sound escaping only occasionally in quiet hiccups. “You… you won’t be…”

Overhead, the moon burned brightly. Tomorrow, they would head downriver and back toward civilization, to Skyhold and Corypheus. Eirwen lifted her eyes to a clear starlit sky.

_For now, all I want is to count the heaven’s lights._

Let tomorrow bring what it would. She would be waiting.

 

***

 

“You won’t be forgotten.”

From where he lingered, just beyond the trees and hidden by the darkness, Solas felt a longing smile tug his mouth. It was wrong to be here, he told himself, to intrude upon her private moments and share in this one. He did not wish to cause her more pain, his words earlier had been a mistake. A calculated one, perhaps, spoken in a moment of weakness. A reminder, he could not remain in the comfort of her warm and determined presence.

_She has hardened her heart, she will close me out._

A defensive reaction, one acted on with immediacy. Yet, she still melted her walls enough for an honest answer. She would not wait for him.

 _That is incorrect,_ he thought. Whether she waited or not was no longer any business of his. She would go on. His smile widened. How like her to face him with challenging eyes, yet practical in outlook. Aware she could not force him, suppressing her own desires, and deciding, childishly, not to want him if he did not feel the same. Best, he knew, if she thought of it that way.

He should be glad. His fears averted. The feelings and memories of their time together would be his to carry on alone, he needn’t fear for her future. His knuckles closed, scraping against rough bark. Solas leaned against the trunk, tongue pursed against his lips, racing across the top of his mouth. He needn’t, but he did.

He wondered. He worried. He waited.

He remembered.

The warmth of her fingers on his hand, her comforting smile, and the fierceness in her eyes.

They were coming to the end now and he scrambled to grasp hold of each moment, even as he held himself apart. The way her head dipped as her lips curved into an amused smirk when Leliana whispered some secret in her ear. How her arms encircled Varric in their moments of quiet by the fire, compassion in shared loss. The companionable, sisterly hand on Cole’s shoulder when they rested at the river’s edge in the Emerald Graves and she taught him to build boats from reeds. Just as she might a Dalish child in her Clan. Her fingers pressing those same blades together and squeezing them against her lips, chasing Dorian with a high pitched whistle after he ruined their fun by freezing the water.

He had heard her discussion with Scout Harding. Heard her worry that she would not be remembered. Forgotten to time as Ameridan was, her contributions remembered but her heritage erased, the woman beneath the mask disappearing into a religious ideal. Entered into the Chantry canon as a hero and a Herald, with all the woman’s hopes and dreams forgotten.

The kind girl who once lead a lost druffalo back to her pasture, who lay flowers on a lover’s grave when her husband could not brave the journey, who listened to the wishes of a brave man that wanted to hide his heritage from the world, who returned a stolen ring to a recently widowed woman, who decreed the mayor of a town in an impossible position be returned to aid them in penance. She allowed a spirit to stay. She listened to others, comforted the lost, and battled enemies with eager fury.

“You shall not be either, vhenan,” he said softly. “I will remember.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, I finally played Jaws of Hakkon. It was a fun grindfest and since I played before Post-Game, I can say Eirwen will slaughter Cory (especially now that she's got that guard building staff, dear lord). Anyway, it got my brain wondering and I churned out this.
> 
> (It also gave me ideas about sad character death that no one wants me to write.)


End file.
